The season of love is coming up, so we reached out to some of our users who were in a relationship and asked them if we could talk to them about their first money talk and how it helped them as a couple. They agreed, so we did.
“In the seven years we’ve been together, we’ve both changed jobs six times, bought three homes, lived in four different cities, and had a baby. We couldn’t have made it through all of those changes without having a lot of talks about money along the way.
We talk about money almost every day these days, whether we’re rethinking our own plans or writing about it here on Turbo. These talks have helped us pay off more than 5,000,000 in debt and save more than 35,000,000 for a rainy day.
It’s important to talk about money with your partner on a regular basis if you want to build a solid financial future and reach those big life goals you both have.
At first, it wasn’t easy for us to talk about our finances with each other. It took us a while to take the next step in our relationship and tell each other how we really felt about money. We both had a lot of student loan debt from law school, plus debts from past relationships. This isn’t something you want to have to tell your boyfriend.
Before our first big talk about money, we talked about it in smaller, more general ways. Even back then, we both knew a lot about money. So, we started talking about money by talking about simple things like which cell phone company we each used and whether we were using employer matching (something we were both doing right even back then). Those were safe topics that gave us a chance to talk about money without having to talk about more sensitive things like our debt.
Choosing how we would take care of our money
After dating for a while, we decided to move in together and start taking care of our money together. Some couples choose to keep their finances separate until marriage or even after, but for us, it just felt right to combine our finances. We thought that if we worked together, we’d be able to reach our goals faster and stay on the same page when it came to setting our financial priorities.
Once we decided to work together on our household finances instead of keeping everything separate, the next step was to talk about what our individual finances were like.
We knew that if we wanted this to work, we had to be completely honest with each other about our money. That meant talking about how much money we made, how much we had saved, and how much debt we had. And boy, did we have a lot of debt between us all.
We had almost 7,000,000 in debt from personal loans, credit card debt, car loans, and business loans that we both wanted to pay off as soon as possible. In order to do that, we had to make a budget and a plan for paying off our debts that we could stick to.
Then we realized that we had very different ideas about how to handle money.
Bringing together the different ways we handle our money
Joseph took a more hands-off approach and relied on the fact that he was a spendthrift to make things work out in the end. In fact, when we sat down to talk about money, Joseph said he didn’t have a budget at all, which was surprising given that he was an accountant.
The problem was that the habits that worked so well when he was in college didn’t really work for him now that he was an adult with a mortgage to pay and a house that needed repairs. Because he didn’t keep track of all of his spending, his debt got higher than he had planned.
On the other hand, I was obsessed with budgets. I was actually making a budget for a whole year at a time. I used an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my daily expenses, savings, and when I planned to pay off my debts. Joseph’s inner accountant came out as soon as he saw it, and he was all in. In fact, he pointed out right away that some categories were missing and suggested adding to others.
Even though I was happy that he agreed with my way of budgeting, it was hard for me at first to accept the changes he suggested. At that point, I had been taking care of my own budget for more than ten years. It felt strange to suddenly have input from someone else on my budget. I finally realized that it wasn’t my budget anymore, but it took a while. We owned it.
Making a plan for our money for the future
During our very first #RealMoneyTalk, we came up with a budget that would work for our new shared living situation and a plan for paying off the debt we each brought into the relationship. Now, that plan was by no means ideal. We definitely disagreed about some things along the way, and we had to change some things that weren’t going the way we thought they would. But the more we talked about money, the more confident we became that we could make decisions about money as a couple.
We also started to have even more faith in each other. Finances can be very private, and most people don’t talk about them as openly as we do, especially at the start. We didn’t find it easy to be honest either. We had to be honest and talk about things we didn’t like, like our student loans and debts from past relationships. But the fact that we were willing to be honest with each other about our money situation helped both our relationship and our finances in the long run.
We were also able to start building on each other’s strengths after we talked about real money. Each of us brought our own life experiences and skills to the table. I had years of experience managing a family’s budget, which included planning and making estimates for big life changes like moving across the country for a new job. And because he had been a day trader, Joseph knew a lot about investing. Plus, he was very good at getting things in order and paying the bills.
Since we had our first #RealMoneyTalk seven years ago, we’ve made a lot of progress with our money. That first tough conversation about money made our relationship and our finances stronger. This made it easier for us to work together on every new challenge we faced in life. Getting on the same page about money early on in our relationship helped us make plans that have allowed us to follow our dreams, pay off debt, save money, and live a full and happy life with our children.”
So there you go. What has this story taught you?
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